Queen:  If this youth of a young man was able to give satisfaction at the King of Sorcha’s Court, I am sure that he will make a dinner to please yourself.

Manus:  I will do more than that.  I will dress a dinner that will please myself.

Princess:  (Clapping hands.) Very well said!

King:  Sound out now some good dishes such as you used to be giving in Sorcha, and the Queen will put them down in a line of writing, that I can be thinking about them till such time as you will have them readied.

Queen:  There are sheeps’ trotters below; you might know some tasty way to dress them.

Manus:  I do surely.  I’ll put the trotters within a fowl, and the fowl within a goose, and the goose in a suckling pig, and the suckling pig in a fat lamb, and the lamb in a calf, and the calf in a Maderalla ...

King:  What now is a Maderalla?

Manus:  He is a beast that saves the cook trouble, swallowing all those meats one after another—­in Sorcha.

King:  That should be a very pretty dish.  Let you go make a start with it the way we will not be famished before nightfall.  Bring him, Dall Glic, to the larder.

Dall Glic:  I’m in dread it’s as good for him to stop where he is.

King:  What are you saying?

Dall Glic:  Those lads of apprentices that left nothing in it only bare hooks.

Nurse:  It is the Queen would give no leave for more provision to come in, saying there was no one to prepare it.

Manus:  If that is so, I will be forced to lay my orders on the Hawk of the Grey Rock and the Brown Otter of the Stream to bring in meat at my bidding.

King:  Hurry on so.

Queen:  I myself will go and give you instructions what way to use the kitchen.

Manus:  Not at all!  What I do I’d as lief do in your own royal parlour! (Blows whistle; two dark-skinned men come in with vessels.) Give me here those pots and pans!

Queen:  What now is about to take place?

Dall Glic:  I not to be blind, I would say those to be very foreign-looking men.

King:  It would seem as if the world was grown to be very queer.

Queen:  So it is, and the mastery being given to a cook.

Manus:  So it should be too!  It is the King of Shades and Shadows would have rule over the world if it wasn’t for the cooks!

King:  There’s some sense in that now.

(Strange men are moving and arranging baskets and vessels.)